News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
As plans move forward for a downtown couplet on Hood and Main Avenues, a group of citizens is proposing a different fix for Sisters' traffic problems.
Brad Boyd, who owns Eurosports on Hood Avenue, is circulating a petition to place before the City of Sisters proposing an option other than a couplet or a bypass.
"Instead of a couplet, instead of a bypass, what we are suggesting is an alternate route," Boyd said.
According to Boyd, the proposed alternate route is different from the $17.2-million bypass that has been rejected as an option by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT). Boyd and his fellow citizens are suggesting a 45-mile-per-hour county road that would loop around Sisters, possibly along the route of the old Brooks-Scanlon logging rail line south of town.
People driving through the area could meander around Sisters on summer weekend days when traffic is gridlocked through town and drive on through town when the road is clear.
Boyd said an approximately 10-mile route would not be a quick run diverting traffic around Sisters and away from businesses.
"I would say that on most days taking this alternate route is longer," Boyd said.
But on the days when traffic backs up two miles outside of town, the route would give through travelers an option.
Information from the Deschutes County Road Department suggests that such a route could be relatively inexpensive to construct, but local planners say there are significant questions about feasibility.
George Kolb of the county road department confirmed rough construction cost estimates totaling between $2.9 million and $3.5 million for a 10-mile alternate route using a 32-foot-wide roadway with bridges over Highway 242 and Squaw Creek.
Kolb cautioned that such numbers are very rough and speculative without an actual route to survey.
Excavation costs could vary and the estimate of roughly $250,000 per bridge is based on the assumption that the bridges would be simple to construct. That could change depending on location and grade.
The county estimates are for construction only; additional costs of right-of-way acquisition, engineering, planning, permitting and land use applications would add significantly to the total bill.
Right-of-way acquisition alone could be expensive. In its bypass cost analysis, ODOT estimated $3 per square foot for a 120-foot right-of-way for a cost of $3.8 million for a two-mile route.
A Hood Avenue/Main Avenue couplet is estimated to cost close to $2 million.
Boyd and some other business people and citizens object to a couplet, arguing that it would create three busy streets instead of one, cause parking problems and difficulty crossing town north-south.
Boyd believes a couplet "is really going to be detrimental to Sisters."
However, a couplet is the preferred option in Sisters' Transportation Systems Plan (TSP) and a citizens' Couplet Advisory Committee has been working for months to come up with a design that would preserve the feel of Sisters' downtown core.
According to Sisters deputy planner, Brian Rankin, "the political feasibility seems to me to be the biggest hurdle to this (alternate route proposal)."
Rankin noted that ODOT controls access permits to the highway and thus controls whether such a project could go forward or not.
"They have a right to decide who can access their highway," Rankin said. "Ultimately, ODOT would have to buy in on this."
ODOT's policy has been that "major improvements such as a truck route or bypass should be implemented only if the need persists after the efficiency of the existing street system has been optimized." (source: Sisters TSP)
Calling the proposed road an alternate route instead of a bypass and building it to a different standard may not change ODOT's view, Rankin said.
And changing Sisters' transportation focus would take time and money for planning and traffic studies.
"The question is: Who is going to pay for that?" Rankin said.
Boyd and his fellow citizens plan to present their petition to the city at the first public hearing of the Couplet Advisory Committee, which is expected to occur sometime in May.
In the meantime, Boyd encourages citizens to "show up and get educated about what is being proposed."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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